1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of information handling systems and in particular to an improved data processing system for presenting information to a user. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing backup font support for missing device font glyphs.
2. Description of Related Art
During the creation of a print job, an application may use a variety of fonts and glyphs within the fonts to produce the desired text output on an output device, such as a printer or display device. A glyph is described as an image, usually an individual character within a font, or a graphic symbol whose appearance conveys information, such as, for example, the vertical and horizontal arrows on cursor keys that indicate the directions in which they control cursor movement. Typically, the application will select a code page, which defines the character encoding and the set of glyphs being used within the font. A code page is a standard character encoding that identifies a set of glyphs. The problem occurs when a font does not support all of the glyphs within a code page. In this instance, glyphs not present in the font are not printed.
More specifically, when new glyphs are created such as the recent introduction of the Euro Currency character, many hardware devices that contain device fonts can not be readily updated to add the new glyph support. In the case of printing devices, this creates a situation where the new glyphs will simply be missing or incorrectly printed. One presently available method for printing missing glyphs involves turning off device fonts and using system fonts. A disadvantage with this method is that the amount of data downloaded to the printer increases by orders of magnitude, reducing efficiency in printing documents. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus for outputting glyphs.